Amazon has retained its crown
Amazon remains the UK's most popular online retailer, a study has found.
The website has once again come top of the latest quarterly IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List of the 50 most used online retailers in the country.

It was followed by Argos, second, and Tesco.com, third, who have swapped places for the July rankings. Play came in fourth place.

IMRG, a trade body for online retail companies, said UK sales in the sector were more than £4bn in July alone.

Travel popularity

Its report put particular focus on the continuing popularity of shopping for holidays online, with travel firms now making up 18 places on the list.

MOST VISITED UK ONLINE RETAILERS (JULY)

Lastminute.com
Source: IMRG
These included Thomson Holidays in fifth place, Expedia in sixth, and Easyjet in seventh.

While most firms stayed in the same position, it said the biggest risers in July included Next, up to 11th from 14th in May, and Littlewoods, which advanced from 38th to 30th.

"The stability of retailers' positions on the list is extraordinary, and tells me two things: these market leaders are satisfying their customers pretty well, and competitors are having little or no effect on their progress," said IMRG's chief executive James Roper.

PLAY.COM AWARDED MOST VISITED RETAIL SITE FOR MUSIC, DVDs AND VIDEO GAMES FOR 2005

Added: (Wed Apr 05 2006)

PLAY.COM AWARDED MOST VISITED RETAIL SITE FOR MUSIC, DVDs AND VIDEO GAMES FOR 2005

Success for Play.com as awards confirm they are entertainment market leaders

05 April 2006: Play.com, one of the UK’s leading entertainment websites has been named as the UK’s most visited retail site for Music as well as Video and Games throughout 2005 (January – December) by Hitwise, the respected online competitive intelligence service.

Trading in a notoriously competitive market, Play.com has seen continued growth especially as online shopping continues to increase in popularity and convenience. Not only contending with traditional retailers making the move online, but also from new technologies like download charts, Play.com has proved it is still a growing hit with consumers. Last month alone Play.com owned over 26% market share of visits to the online retail Music sector, way ahead of its closest competitor HMV.co.uk with just 7.4% market share and Apple iTunes with 5.3%, according to data from Hitwise.

In addition to owning the market for music traffic, Play.com is also the number one choice for DVDs and Video Games beating stiff competition from the likes of HMV.co.uk and Blockbuster.co.uk. Enjoying over 29% of the market share, Play.com were way ahead with only 5% of consumers choosing to visit CD Wow! and less than 4% GAME.

Simon Perree, Managing Director of Play.com commented “Being recognised as the UK’s leading online retailer in the Music, DVD and Video Games sectors by such a credible source is fantastic news. CDs, DVDs and Games are one of the most popular purchases made online. Play.com’s dedication to price, service and free delivery has confirmed our position as market leaders and this is something that we look to extend in the future”

PLAY.com is the UK's favourite DVD, CD and games retailer and was founded in 1998 by Richard Goulding and Simon Perrée. PLAY.com offers DVDs, CDs, games, books and electronics and differentiates itself from competitors by focusing on entertainment and leisure only and pioneering free delivery on the internet.

PLAY.com has become the UK's third most visited online retailer with in excess of four million customers in over 30 countries with more than 600 employees.

Top 50 online retailers in the UK

Added:
Feb 12, 2008
Hitwise has published its latest ‘Hot Shops’ list in partnership with the IMRG, which ranks by visits, the top 50 UK e-retailers selling goods and services within the IMRG Capgemini Index Classification in January 2008.

This eighth quarterly Hot Shops List is notable for its lack of movement either up or down of the e-retailers it tracks.

Thirty of the fifty were within three places of their rankings in November and of these, twenty-three were within two places and fifteen were within one position.

Analysis

As expected at this time of year, travel companies performed well, with all nine listed improving their rankings. Thomson Holidays (7) was up six places to jump back into the top ten, while the fastest riser was Thomas Cook (23) up twenty-five spots since November. Easyjet (11) was up eight places.

The only new entrant was LOVEFiLM, in at 37.

IMRG's CEO, James Roper, comments: "The Hot Shops List gives us a fascinating insight into the big picture of what is going on in e-retail. For example, at the beginning of 2007 we were astonished to see that half of the UK's top 100 retailers still had no transactional website.

“But within the past year, a swath of household names have appeared on the List for the first time, including Marks & Spencer, Dixons, Sainsbury's, Boots, Topshop, IKEA, O2, River Island, GAME and Odeon Cinemas. Having observed the market for a couple of decades, I find the pace at which some retailers are engaging with the internet still seems glacial, but all serious players will be trading online by the end of 2008."

Hitwise's Director of Research, Robin Goad, comments: "Following a somewhat disappointing pre-Christmas period for online retail, the UK experienced a record breaking online sales season that extended into January. UK Internet searches for post-Christmas sales more than tripled this year, and the online properties of high street retailers in particular benefited from this surge in traffic.

“The exception to this rule was Play.com, which received a huge amount of sales traffic and placed higher in the list this year than for the same quarter last year. Other successes included Apple, which reached its highest ever ranking thanks to the publicity surrounding the launch of the Macbook Air, and Thomson Holidays, which received a seasonal boost to become the most visited travel website on the list."